January 27, 2012

The task for half of my freshmen this past two weeks is to explain the system of moral authority in their lives. The question is fairly simple: are you what you do, what you believe, or a combination of the two? By what you do I mean actions in the world, not a job. For the record, I'm pretty sure there's not a great answer to this question, but the point of the question isn't to find the solution; it's to track the decision making process, including moral justification, when confronted with a moral dilemma.

I started thinking along this track when reading through Driscoll's sex freak book (real title Real Marriage). In it, Driscoll uses the Bible to help his penis, and yours if you're a boy, find its way around the female form: hands, mouth, vagina, and rectum. And if you think I'm being needlessly crude, read Driscoll on oral sex based on Song of Songs. Driscoll's discussion of dangling fruit reminds me of Patton Oswalt's G-Rated Filth (and that is not for the faint of heart, folks. watch only if extremely graphic language gets you aroused...er...doesn't offend you). Driscoll uses the Bible as a moral authority by which he assesses the rightness and wrongness of particular sex acts, which is quite frankly hysterical, given that he thinks it's ok to bugger his wife but not to spank his aforementioned penis, neither of which the Bible mentions. This is, of course, as I said in the previous post, an exegetical model based on personal preference. I'll go ahead and say it now; all exegetical models are based at least partly on personal preference. That Mark Driscoll is a psychotic narcissist only makes his percentage of personal preference higher than someone who at least attempts to be honest about the complexities of interpreting an ancient and often ambiguous (if not silent on an issue) text.

Moral authority is always complex at the conceptual level. When I ask students the question about how they decide what is right and wrong, inevitably they give the standard answers: parents, pastors, peers, God. The first is easiest to dispense with; most humans have willfully disobeyed parents when the desire outweighed the fear of reprisal, or when they simply stopped believing as parents did. In the first case, did they really believe what they were doing was wrong, or did what they want to do really constitute what they believed about the action? Parse at your leisure. Pastors and peers we can ignore for now, as the first is seldom really heard and the latter work more as justification or consolation than character formation. The real problem is God.

When people say God is their moral authority, I'm absolutely certain they don't understand what they're saying. First, God is not immediately available to talk to them, and as for those (like one student) who said a relationship with Jesus was key to understanding the Bible, I simply ask why you have so many denominations and traditions if that relationship steers you the right direction. It's simply a way of avoiding the dilemma. God is not your authority because God is not telling you what to do. A book is. The authority people believe is resident in God is mediated through a text, and that text must be interpreted; God, over against Elijah's assertions, is not readily available to answer questions. That leaves a community, or in most cases, an individual to ascertain which portions of the Bible function as moral authority. All this to say, if an individual is making the assessment about particular texts, then the locus of moral authority is the individual's conscience and desires, not God and not the text. The text may give shape to the parameters, but it certainly doesn't dictate particular choices.

An example. If I read that a man may not lie with another man as with a woman, and I take it as a moral command, then I create an exegetical model that dictates that all such plainly worded commands must be interpreted consistently throughout the text. There is a problem, though. When I turn over to Matthew 5-7, Jesus gives many plainly worded commands (Don't resist an evil person.) that Christians plainly ignore. The calculus seems to be how difficult the command actually is to carry out. If I don't want to have sex with a man, then that command is easy and can easily be read literally. If a man has broken into my home, the second command becomes radically difficult and must therefore be parsed. The parsing happens inside my own complex assemblage of emotion, desire, preference, will, and honesty. My personal preference becomes the moral authority. Over against the one I call Lord, I make a decision that is contrary to what he says, and to do that, I must justify it in such a way that I'm allowed to remain part of the group called Christian. At this point, I point out (hypocritically) the competing verses in the text, especially the ones about violence, to justify my decision. Hypocritical because if challenged on other issues, I'm likely to insist there is no conflict; gays can't have gay sex. Period.

The further complicating factor is the issue of forgiveness. That I am able to make decisions that allegedly go against what I actually believe is largely a function of the practice of so-called repentance. I can believe premarital sex is wrong and still engage in it as long as I make a show of saying I'm sorry to God. This, of course, allows me to do whatever it is I actually desire to do while making a feeble nod to God with faint promises of "trying harder." Once again, my own preference is the moral authority since it is what gives shape to what I actually do. That Christians have watered down the ideals of forgiveness and repentance has in fact made it harder for them to make disciples, and it has contributed a great degree to the dualism inherent in modern evangelicalism.

An example. I said, "Let's say I do everything Jesus tells me to do. I feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the prisoners, obey the commandmentes, sell my goods and donate to homeless shelters, live generously, forgive easily, love sacrficially, all because I'm crazy about this Jesus guy. I then tell you I don't believe in God. Am I a Christian?" At this point it's clear that it's a trap. Whatever they've said previously about how important actions are, it's clear now that they will disqualify all my actions based on one "false" belief. This is the heart of the problem. Belief, functionally, is the determining factor in moral authority. As long as I believe it's the authority, it doesn't matter what I do; I believe the right things. (The soteriological dilemma should be obvious here, too.) My belief insulates me from the demands of ethics and allows me to remain part of the group even as I behave in ways that are contrary to what the group says is vital to group identity.

Back to Driscoll. Reverend Sex Freak begins with a desire: I would like to insert my penis into my wife's x. I now need moral authority to do so. I parse the Bible. Oh, how convenient--here's a verse about a woman sitting in front of low hanging fruit (ironically, the description is an apt one of Real Marriage). Clearly God wants my wife to pleasure my fruit. Where the Bible is clearly silent, as if it wasn't on that issue, Driscoll finds authority in different places. That's all fine, except that this is hermeneutics in reverse. I start with my desires and then find their justification--metaphorical, implied, or explicit--in the text. This makes the text functionally worthless, and it's not just worthless for people who misuse it as egregiously as Driscoll. Without a consistent rubric to direct the exegetical process, how do you avoid exegesis based on personal preference? No one will believe you if you don't do the hard stuff, and they shouldn't. Even if you do though, how can I know that your rubric isn't arbitrary?

Comments

If there is an objective truth, not up to interpretation, your comments fall flat to the ground.

Then the question would be whether or not we can truly know such an objective truth.

Furthermore, if Christians weren't "hypocritical" and actually believed EVERYTHING Jesus said, including the "resist not an evil" man, you would look pretty embarr-assed. I assert, such is the case with some Christians.

Dear Mr. Lobo, not sure you'd be able to identify this objective truth of which you speak. Can we know it? No idea. I'm borderline certain the Bible doesn't contain it, just as I'm borderline certain it's almost a useless designation. It's a way of saying I'm compelled to believe this. Unfortunately, this is about metaphysics, so you can say anything and demonstrate nothing. So whose comments are falling flat?

Such is the case with a very small subset of Christians, but that they get the pacifism right says nothing about what else they do or don't do. Way to miss the point, though. Now that you've decided some do it and some don't, you've sort of made my point again. Well done, Mr. Lobo.

Good stuff, Greg. I have noted before to some of my conservative friends that I find it puzzling that the Bible "means what it says," etc when talking about gays, but when it challenges wealth, or violence, somehow the literal interpretation is no longer convincing.

Greg, your post very timely appeared in my Reader as I'm finishing up the "moral character" portion of my application to the Bar. I'm supposed to provide 6 people who can attest to my good moral character (because the state of Illinois does SUCH a great job of weeding out those sleazy, immoral attorneys!!).

A lot of the people I listed have known me for ages and are familiar with my fervent-fundagelical days. But I immediately thought, the more fundy my beliefs are doesn't necessarily make me more moral. And that's a pretty sad indictment of fundagelicals. They hold themselves up as the most moral in the face of godless liberals, but (and I bet the Illinois Bar folks have already learned this), professing this type of faith isn't necessarily an indicator of a better person.

Natalie, in some circles, some religious affiliations might actually count against you for that purpose. Religious visas are the largest source of immigration fraud, for instance, far exceeding fraudulent marriage claims and invalid visa apps by members of organized criminal groups. Department of State at least has known for decades that organizations designed to be paradises for con artists (by institutionalizing unconditional trust and leaps of faith) will tend to contain more than their fair share of malefactors.

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Have you ever read Karl Barth? I think that if you do then you will find that you are not alone in your observations.

The Bible is fallible and this is essential to its theological function, namely, so that fallible humans will not set it up as a false absolute. Revelation is under the control of God as revelation controlled by humankind is revelation distorted. This is what you are railing about! The Bible is only a witness to revelation, not revelation itself.

Also, Knowing YHWH existentially and following his ways are not dependent upon believing the perfect things about YHWH.

To other commentors- Please resist the urge to seek to increase your feeling of social and intellectual superiority by insulting me for this comment. Not every form of communication on the internet needs to end in a flame war.

PS. I find the doctrine of inerrancy and the inconsistent hermeneutics of its adherents to be infuriating.

Had you read more than one post, you would know that I've read more Barth than many Reformed folk. God knows Acts 29 and their ilk could use some Barth. However, you don't solve the problem by saying the Bible is a witness to revelation; you only move it back one degree and make it even more unreliable. If it witnesses poorly to the revelation, how do we know there was a revelation at all. I'm almost certain this is the issue the Traditionalists in Islam hoped to avoid by declaring the Qur'an to be the actual words of Allah. As for your "social and intellectual superiority" comment, you have an odd way of communicating without flaming, it seems.